Owning and running a small business is not a small job, as you would know. In fact, the word ‘small’ is misleading in many ways. A small business is small only because of the number of workers it employs or its scale of operations (sales turnover/revenue, in some countries). It in no way denotes the kind of effort it takes to make it a successful venture. Let’s look at some of the challenges faced by small business owners and how you can they can be overcome…
- Setting up operations: Government agencies encourage small business to set up operations and offer a greater choice to consumers in terms of products and services. But setting up a small business involves many formalities, especially if you want the concessions offered by the government, financial institutions etc. This results in a lot of paper documents being created. An electronic document management program helps you organize and stay on top of all your startup related documents; e.g. folders for business plans, documents tagged as ‘incorporation documents’, document type set as ‘license’ etc.
- Resource constraints: Small offices usually do not employ more than a few people. This means everyone needs to work at peak efficiency all the time – something that can be expected of machines and systems, but not of human beings. That’s where automation systems like document management software come in handy.
- Competition: Small businesses often cater to the local markets and therefore face stiff competition from brands in their immediate surroundings. Operating efficiently is one of the safeguards against being outperformed by your rival brands. Document management helps immensely when it comes to managing office administration efficiently and coordinating with your suppliers, service providers and even servicing customer accounts. This means your records are always up-to-date and every party that deals with you would be happy to be doing business with you.
- Long term growth path: As your small business succeeds financially, you could have two options for growth – for ne, you could diversify into a related field; or, you could plow back your surplus and expand your business with the same product line. Either path calls for thorough research, feasibility studies etc., requiring you to compile and manage loads of information and share it with your team, your consultants, lawyers etc. If you have document management software in place that helps you manage this workload, it can save you a lot of time and effort.
If you have not yet tried using electronic document management, you should download our Free Trial of Sohodox small business document management software. Browse through the benefits of using Sohodox or view videos of Sohodox at work.
